


Chess

by wisdomeagle



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Chess, Community: lilahwes, F/M, Season/Series 04, Wolfram & Hart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-18
Updated: 2005-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:49:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley joins Wolfram and Hart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [juliet42](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=juliet42).



I. Gameboard (The Proposition.)

Although always difficult, when she is fully clothed and perfectly coiffed, drinking spring water solely to mock his third glass of wine, Lilah is impossible.

"Well? Are you in? Or do you enjoy sitting in an empty apartment all day? Nice view, by the way." She gestures towards the window behind him, and he spins around. Nothing there but an empty, dark sky. He faces Lilah again.

"Are you going to drink it?" She touches the rim of his glass.

"Should I?"

"You trust me, don't you?" She laughs.

"Never," he replies, taking a long swallow of bright red wine.

II. Rook (The Fortress.)

He is asleep when he joins the firm. Whatever drug Lilah gave him, it knocked him out, but it's given him wonderfully precious clarity. He's never tasted anything purer than wine from Lilah's mouth, never known anything so clearly as this: he can't go back to Angel, and moreover, doesn't _want_ to. The voices offering him a job are all different, low and seductive, high-pitched and girlish, and all belong to Lilah. He laughs himself awake; he can hear his own hollow chuckling long after he's forgotten what he dreamt or the promises he made while he slept.

III. Knight (The Savior.)

"Enjoying your work?" Lilah visits him less often every week; perhaps she's given up the fear that he'll go running to Angel with the company secrets. He will never again be that foolish. He keeps the secrets to himself and makes his own quiet plans, but there is never an Angel in these plans, never a hero.

"Very much."

"I knew you would." Her smile might be happy, or might just be victorious. "It's good to see you out of the apartment, anyhow. We were worried about you."

"I doubt that." He keeps his voice mild.

"So, tonight?"

"Every night."

IV. Bishop (The Wedding.)

He sees less of Lilah than he'd like. Lunchtimes are dull; librarians are all the same, glasses, prudery, and nearly endless talk of cross-referencing. He'd sometimes rather he ate with the lawyers, where there's at least the chance that someone might get poisoned, which would take the edge off his boredom.

"Evil getting tedious, lover?" Lilah asks him crisply. She seems to appear out of nowhere and probably retreats into hell when she's done with him. She's very rarely talkative, and the itch for discussion burns like day-old beard did last summer. He sees more of Lilah than he'd like.

V. Pawn (The Minion.)

She says it to his dick. "Is this still all about Angel for you?"

He says it around her tongue, slips it into her mouth. "At the moment, Lilah, it appears to be about you."

Nothing was really all about Angel until he fished him, dripping, from the ocean. Everything has always been about what was right and what was wrong. Lilah, being both exceptionally right and perpetually wrong, has become the new North on his moral compass.

This -- all of this -- really has nothing to do with Angel at all, except that he remains vital for Wolfram and Hart.

VI. King (An Insert.)

If Wesley weren't so smart, she would already have had him shot. If there weren't the possibility that she'd wake up dead, she wouldn't like it half so much when he nuzzles her while they sleep. If it weren't for Wesley, she might be bored already. Giving minions their comeuppance will suffice for only so long; Lilah needs a new triumph -- something that belongs to Wesley, though he'd swear he's already sold it. She made sure they didn't take his soul, because she wants it for her own, a trophy to keep with her well-aged wine and finest shoes.

VII. Queen (The Crux of the Matter.)

"Why did you even come to work for us if you planned to be disloyal? Surely, Wes, surely not even you could be that blind or that stupid?"

He shrugs at Lilah and wonders if it will be painless.

"I'm not going to kill you, you know."

Not painless, then.

"Not while you're still so -- exceptional."

"How so? Surely the Academy turns out more than enough disgruntled Watchers to keep your ranks full for decades."

"If that was all you were, do you think you'd have lasted even this long?"

"I would question, Lilah, whether I really have survived."

VIII. Black (The Betrayal.)

"It wasn't necessary for you to come." Wesley consults his compass, but the damn thing still refuses to point anywhere but at Lilah. "Do you have an unusually large number of fillings? A pin in your leg?"

"Or maybe I'm actually a robot." Laughter. "Let me see that thing."

He holds it out of reach. "Tell me why you came."

"I already won the bet," she reminds him. "Re-la-tion-ship. Happy?"

"Very, except that I'm still on the lam with an untrustworthy companion."

"I was done there already."

"Oh?" He raises an eyebrow.

"They think I care too much."

"Do you?"

XI. White (The Happily Ever After.)

Wesley hates cooking and Lilah can't. Maid service is out of the question. They would be dead from starvation were it not for improbable woodsy companions who seem to have arrived straight from a Disney corruption of Grimm. The next time a cunning bluebird wakes him at dawn, he fully intends to shoot the thing. What makes it worse, really, is that Lilah's taken to calling their life "living the dream," as if all warriors for the light -- what Lilah insists on calling decent human beings -- wanted nothing more than fairyland fantasies.

He is quite afraid she's right.

X. Checkmate (The Revelation.)

"Surely luring me out here wasn't your plan." Wesley is talking to no one; Lilah hasn't been here for weeks. "Surely you had a better plan than 'leave Angel's former companion to starve in the forest surrounded by woodland animals.'" He is, still, talking to no one. "Was it revenge? Or just the thrill of the game?"

He never trusted Lilah, but he acted as though he did. Perhaps his trust was misplaced; perhaps he should have learned from Angel to rely on no one else.

If Lilah knew that he refused to grieve, would she still be laughing?


End file.
